Today I put in a shift from 9 to 5 in the garden, with warm sunshine throughout. Gardening is a natural history opportunity and I always have tubes, pooter, camera and notebook handy.
Today's natural history highlight has to be these little sticks of candy floss, growing from the surface of a very old King Alfred's Cake Daldinia concentrica on an old, well-rotten Ash log that was deeply buried under Ivy, until I came along with my secateurs.
I have named them as Arcyria denudata, on the basis that they're a good match to images on the Bucks Fungus Group website and they suggest it is fairly distinctive. I've never seen this before, but I've hardly looked at slime-moulds.
Given that I have only ever seen 3 shelled slugs on the mainland, the fact that I can routinely see them in the garden, and elsewhere around Ventnor, always feels pretty special. Here's two from under a log.
Despite the dorsal grooves remaining distinctly separate all the way to the junction of the shell (as shown on a different individual below), I've confirmed that the shelled slugs in our garden and at Ventnor Botanic Gardens are Testacella scutulum, with expert help from Ben Rowson.
Today's mystery is actually something I've observed a few times before, but today I have decided to try and work out what it is. Here are a few shots of micro-moth caterpillars curled around the tip of a short blade of grass. Or at least I have assumed them to be micro-moths just because of their small size, but I'm advised that they could be early instar macro-moth caterpillars. There were six of them doing this in a small area and they were quite static. I'd have understood if they were up basking in the sunshine but that patch of the meadow was in shade by this time. Someone will know immediately what they are! If that's you, please let me know.
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